Military rifles were not
always as excellent
as they are today. In the early days, black powder and lead balls
were used by every nation. Black powder was smoky, dirty, and
inefficient compared with modern propellants. When one of these
early rifles was fired, a cloud of white smoke disclosed the rifleman's
position, and a thick residue, like carbon and soot, was deposited
in the bore of the rifle. Black powder has a lower energy content
per cubic centimeter compared with modern rifle powders which
have high velocities.

When the lead ball was
fired from the
rifle, it began to lose speed quickly. A sphere is poorly shaped
for fast travel. Lead balls from some of our early military rifles
fired at a muzzle speed (velocity) as high as 2,000 feet per second.
But at a distance of 100 meters they would slow to about 1,500
feet per second; whereas a bullet from the M1 or M14 rifle today,
at an initial velocity of 2,800 feet per second, loses only about
300 feet per second the first 100 meters. The lead balls of these
early military rifles were often "patched," that is,
greased linen, flannel, or thin soft leather was wrapped (and
sometimes tied) over the ball. When this greased patch was used,
it served as a lubricant to ease loading, reduce escaping gas,
and keep the ball from losing lead onto the bore as it traveled
through it. But sometimes the lead ball was used bare, in which
case the bore frequently picked up a lead coating which grew
progressively
thicker, decreasing the accuracy with each shot fired until the
lead deposit was removed. The same problem arose from the rough
residue left by the burning of black powder. Unless the bores
of those early rifles were washed after each shot, the residue
became progressively thicker, making the diameter of the bore
smaller. Since most early rifles were muzzle-loaders, it became
increasingly difficult to load, and accuracy diminished, due to
constantly reduced bore diameter.

The effort required just to
ram a lead
ball, patched or not, down 32 or more inches of barrel became
first exhausting and then all but impossible. The inefficiency
of black powder and early projectiles led early rifle makers to
build their weapons with longer barrels and in larger caliber
bores than the rifles of today. This combination gave as high
a velocity as could be obtained without making rifles completely
awkward to handle, and gave the desired killing effect needed
for fighting infantry and cavalry. When you cannot propel a missile
at high velocity, you must increase the weight in order to get
adequate effect. Any increase in weight with a ball projectile
results from an increase in diameter.

In time the round
projectile gave way
to the elongated one. It had been discovered as early as the late
1700's that elongated missiles were more efficient in flight and
traveled to greater maximum ranges. Massed squad and platoon fire
with elongated-bullet rifles could be effective at 1,000 meters
or more. Several years prior to the war of 1861-65, the
elongated-bullet
rifle was adopted almost worldwide because it permitted faster
loading. Successful methods of making metal cartridge cases had
not yet been found, so most of the first bullet rifles were
muzzle-loaders
too. The early Sharps rifle was one of the exceptions. It was
a breechloader taking a linen cartridge. Because there was no
metal cartridge case, such as is used in modern rifles, a portion
of the gas generated by the powder flashed out at the juncture
of breechlock and receiver of this rifle.

Rifles

By 1870 nearly all armies
had adopted
breechloading infantry rifles (usually single shot) which usually
fired fixed, metallic, black powder, lead bullet cartridges in
calibers ranging from .40 to .45. These improved firearms could
be fired by a trained soldier 15 or more times a minute. Lever
action repeating rifles had been developed to a level of real
usability by 1861, but had to be held to lesser powder levels
(for design reasons) than was desirable for infantry use. The
Spencer and Henry lever-action rifles were used in the war of
1861-65 by many cavalry units. The Spencer carried seven cartridges
and the Henry carried 16 cartridges.

Both weapons had a range of
about 225
meters, and the rate of fire was five shots to one, compared with
the standard muzzle-loader. The year 1886 was an historic one
in infantry rifle design. France adopted a manually operated
bolt-action
rifle of caliber .32 (8-mm) jacketed bullet design (to prevent
melting and failure to spin in the rifling grooves) for use with
nitrocellulose (smokeless) powder. The ancient bondage to black
powder had been dissolved. Soldiers using these newer rifles found
that very little smoke was given off in firing to disclose their
positions.

By 1888 Britain and Germany
used similar
new designs. And in 1892 the United States followed suit. By 1898
no modern army was without a smaller caliber repeating rifle of
the new type. The new arms were 5- to 10-shot capacity, ranging
in caliber from .26 to .32 as compared to the older .40 to .45
caliber sizes. Nitrocellulose propellants and advances in metallurgy
had permitted a reduction in bullet diameter, a retention of adequate
shocking power, an increase in average accuracy and penetration,
and a flattening of trajectory (extension of the limit of grazing
fire) by as much as 50 percent or more. Logistically, the weight
of individual rifle cartridges had dropped by as much as 40 percent.

The
M1 Garand Rifle

The Springfield 1903 rifle
reflected
the era of high development in rifles operated manually which
ended in 1936 with the introduction into the United States service
of the Garand design, designated M1. This first of the successfulul
gas-operated rifles of full infantry power outgunned enemy rifles
in Europe and the Pacific in the ratio of 3 to 1. It was rugged,
sure functioning, powerful, and accurate. The tiring bolt manipulation,
so painfully learned by former generations of American soldiers,
was no longer necessary. The M1 rifle ushered in an era that saw
foreign nations scrambling for semiautomatic designs in individual
infantry weapons. Britain and France discarded their old, time
proven bolt actions and took up the Belgian FN design. Soviet
Russia developed as her now standard infantry weapon, a rifle-powered
submachinegun of 30 shot capacity (the AK).

Relationship
of Individual
Weapon Design to Combat Use

To fully understand rifle
marksmanship
and rifle marksmanship training, it is necessary to know something
of rifles, their characteristics and combat usefulness. The rifle
is the primary individual weapon for all armies because it is
the most versatile and effective weapon which can be carried and
used by a soldier in combat. The rifle can fire ordinary bullets
to kill enemy soldiers; it can fire armor-piercing bullets to
wreck truck engines; it can fire tracer bullets to point out targets;
and it can fire incendiary bullets to start fires in flammable
materials. Add to this the fact that the rifle can also shoot
signal flares and powerful grenades and you can see that the rifle
is one of the most important weapons in the army. But why the
rifle? Isn't a hand weapon such as a pistol, revolver, or a hand
grenade more convenient in combat? A hand weapon is far more convenient
but it cannot do the wide and far-reaching job of a shoulder weapon.
The rifle is a weapon that can kill, or destroy at a considerable
distance so that the enemy can be prevented from getting too close.
If individual weapons can reach out a considerable distance it
is easier to keep the enemy where larger, more powerful supporting
weapons can smash him. The rifleman's weapon must be so constructed
that it can be held with steadiness while he directs accurate
fire, and powerful enough to kill enemy soldiers as far away as
marksmanship skill and the precision of the weapon will allow.

Battlefield
Requirements

The complex package called
a "rifle"
is what soldiers live by on the battlefield. If the design is
well done, the rifle will fit the average man very well and will
deliver accurate and deadly fire on targets. Seven essential.
qualities of a modern combat rifle are:

It must be accurate.

Its trajectory must be flat.

Its recoil must be moderate.

It must be powerful.

It must be easy to master.

Its mechanism must be
unfailing.

It and its ammunition (in
quantity) must
be light enough to carry under combat conditions.

Accuracy
and Power

Accurate rifle fire is a
key to success.
A soldier who merely "sprays" shots in the vicinity
of the enemy produces little effect. Against an unseasoned enemy
such fire may be temporarily effective, but the result is not
lasting. The mission of the rifleman is to kill the enemy. Against
seasoned troops, spraying shots has little effect. Someone once
gave what is perhaps the best definition of firepower when he
said that, "firepower is bullets hitting people!" Trajectory-wise,
the M1 rifle is "flat-shooting." That is, its bullets
travel very fast, so they can't fall very much below the line
of sight over their usable range. And because the bullets don't
"drop" much below the extended line of the bore over
combat ranges, it is relatively easy to make hits with them. Moderate
recoil means that the muzzle climb in firing is moderate, which
makes for fast recovery between shots. This is very important
in rapid fire in combat against numbers of enemy. The U.S. military
rifle must be powerful. That means it must be able to kill an
enemy soldier as far away as the rifleman can surely hit him.
It must penetrate enemy helmets and body armor easily up to the
same range. It should have enough punch to tear through the side
of enemy trucks to kill personnel riding within or to destroy
the truck engine. The bullets of the caliber .30 rifle are relatively
small and light--fine for high speed; yet they are heavy enough
and large enough in diameter to deliver a killing blow when they
get where they are going.

U.S.
Rifle, Caliber
.30, M1

Description

The U. S. Rifle, caliber
.30 M1 (fig
1) is a clip-fed, gas-operated, air-cooled, semiautomatic shoulder
weapon. This means that the rifle is loaded by inserting a metal,
clip (containing a maximum of eight rounds) into the receiver;
that the power needed to cock the rifle and chamber each round
comes from the expanding gas of the previous round; that the air
cools the barrel; and that the rifle fires one round each time
the trigger is pressed.

The rifle has a fixed front
front sight
and an adjustable rear sight. The rear sight aperture can be raised
or lowered by means of the elevation knob on the left of the receiver,
and moved right or left to adjust for the force of the wind by
means of the windage knob on the right of the receiver.

The
characteristics of the
Garand are nothing new to me. My father is a retired U.S. Army
Colonel, who fought through World War II and the Korean War. I
was raised in an Army house and knew the manual of arms for the
Garand by the time I was nine years old. I shot my first one when
I was seven. Yeah, you could say I know about Garands.

It has
been a long time since
a design engineer at the then--U.S. government operated Springfield
Armory named John C. Garand invented the first self-loading service
rifle ever to see issue to American military forces. It has also
been a long time since the controversy between Melvin Johnson's
rifle versus the Garand. World War II, Korea, and even Vietnam,
not to mention Lebanon, Nicaragua, and hundreds of other "police
actions" in which the Garand played so vital a part, have
all begun to fade from this generations memories.

Yes, it's
true. 1936, the year
that signaled the coming of the Garand, was indeed a long time
ago, and the axiom of "how soon we forget" does apply.
In our "modern age" of nuclear weapons,
chemical/biological/radiological
warfare, and other highly sophisticated armament, we truly have
forgotten . . . forgotten what accomplishes missions, what "takes
the high ground," what WINS!

The
infantryman, whether he
be a dogfaced Army "GI" or a Marine is the man who has
been forgotten and it is he who has been and will always be called
upon to spread his blood on the soil in individual combat. In
the end it will always be he who "winkles the other guy out
of his foxhole with a bayonet and decides the outcome."

Technology
is vast; all-consuming,
it seems. It engulfs us and sweeps us away into galaxies "far,
far, away," with the promised of increased efficiency in
battle. Some of it--a small portion in relation to the overall
quantities forced upon us--actually works, and an even smaller
percentage of it works well enough to bother with, provided we
can, as nations or individuals, financially afford it. For the
last fifty years, we have been traveling this road and it has
been only in the last decade that the realization of all that
we have forgotten when "technology" seduced us have
materialized.

Thank God.
For had these realizations
not become increasingly evident, our road could have only been
to defeat in the wars that must in the near future be fought.

The "old
timers"
who fought with Pershing and Marshall in World War I, opposed
the "reduced accuracy" of the Garand rifle as compared
to the revered--and sometimes even coveted--M1903 Springfield
rifle. Also loudly voiced were fears that the new self-loader
would cause horrendous expenditures of ammunition without commensurate
enemy troops neutralized. Strange . . . the same thing was said
when the 20-round box magazine appeared on battle rifles in the
1950's--25 years later.

There was,
however, a difference.
The Garand rifle, in spite of its supposed shortcomings, in spite
of fears by its critics of disproportionate ammunition expenditures,
performed brilliantly throughout its entire military career, compiling
a service record as yet unsurpassed by any successor.

From 1936
to, officially, 1957,
the Garand was seen in the heat of battle worldwide. Unofficially,
it can today be encountered although considered to be "obsolete"
by all but the most knowing experts--the ones who haven't forgotten
what wins.

Douglas
MacArthur applauded
the M1. George S. Patton, Jr. proclaimed it, "the greatest
single battle implement ever devised by man." Even the normally
passive Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly praised it. Renowned small-arms
expert S.L.A. Marshall, in his highly detailed and critical evaluation
of the performance of U.S. Infantry weapons during the Korean
War, noted the phenomenal love of the American infantryman for
the weapon, who, without reservation, candidly stated to him on
over a hundred occasions that he could not think of replacing
it with anything else.

How could
this have happened
if the concept of the self-loading infantry rifle was invalid,
or if the M1 was "inaccurate," or if it failed to generally
get the job done? The answer is simple: it couldn't. The legend
of the Garand was--and is--based upon the unassailable fact that
the weapon, in spite of its theoretical weaknesses, WORKS--in
the mud, in the rain, in the snow, and in the dust. History has
irrevocably proven this beyond any possible doubt and it is important
evidence that theory, however enticing it may appear to be, must
be proven in the cold light of dawn. Those who forced the adoption
of the 5.56mm and the M16 forgot this critical fact. And, in that
cold light of dawn--this time in the steaming jungles of Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos--the concept of saturation fire and general
abandonment of the principles of individual marksmanship and weapon
performance FAILED.

They
failed because they were
accepted as being the universal solution to all military problems
and this attitude was transmitted during training to the troops.
Tactics and weapons have been generated around this theses for
the last twenty years and have come back to haunt us. I know.
I was there. I was one of those who wrote the letters to the families
of those who had fallen in battle, one of the most difficult tasks
of a commander. Many of those men died because of the failure
of theoretically sound, but realistically invalid, policies. I
saw it myself. Too many died because the 5.56 and M16 failed.

There must
be a balance between
accuracy and firepower in the general application. On one end
of the spectrum we have the traditional bolt-action rifle such
as the M 1903 Springfield. On the other end we have the M16. The
Springfield was rugged, highly accurate and powerful, but, in
the acid test of modern warfare, proved to be more complex to
operate than necessary and unable to produce sufficient volumes
of fire to be adequately effective. On the other hand, the M16
is fragile, lacks power and range, is only moderately accurate,
and designed with the idea that the trooper is to substitute a
high volume of automatic fire with an inadequately powered cartridge
for marksmanship. Neither one of these concepts is satisfactory,
for as with most questions, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

John
Garand understood this,
for even though the M16 did not yet exist, the principles on which
it was to be based did. The rifle he designed and developed was
the solidification of his thinking. It is capable of what has
proven over the years to be superb accuracy, far more than one
can actually utilize in the field. It functions itself, allowing
the operator to spend more time on the basic fundamentals of
marksmanship.
It is powerful and rugged, capable of sustaining incredible abuse
and yet still knock down an enemy at 500 meters.

It is a
rifleman's rifle--in
the purest form--yet it does not encourage wild, inaccurate fire,
nor does it break in half when used in close combat. It instills
confidence, not disgust. It is the almost ideal compromise between
firepower and accuracy, between the old and the "new."

Even
outside the military application,
there can be no finer rifle for a serious survivalist or adventurer
in the field, for most of the same criteria still apply. The box
magazine is the result of a need to mass suppressive fire, so
important to the successful consummation of squad tactics. It
has no value whatsoever to an individual, only the members of
a larger group. It is fragile, must be kept separate from its
loaded counterparts, catches on things incessantly in the field,
and is uncomfortable to carry and manipulate.

The
8-round en bloc staggered
clip of the Garand is small, light, simple in principle and
application,
and disposable. Once it fulfills its function, it is automatically
ejected from the weapon.

Criticisms
of the fact that
one cannot "top off" a partially loaded clip while in
the weapon appear to more theoretical than practical, for if one
has time to realize the need to reload, he can simply insert a
fresh clip and at leisure reload any partially expended one via
single rounds of ammunition carried on his person. This is no
secret to the seasoned infantryman, no matter what his generation.

No box
magazine-equipped rifle
compares to the superior balance and "feel" of the M1.
It shoulders quickly, positively, and possesses the best human
engineering in the world. In the overall context, it is the easiest
battle rifle to shoot well.

A
Final Note

Even
the GI-Joe Action
Figures appreciate the M1 Garand.

This
is a small plastic
replica of the rifle that accompanied one of the figures.